WHO’S GOING TO BE THE LADY MARMALADE QUEEN? THE MARMALADE AWARDS!

Posted on February 21, 2013 by admin

There is total beauty in morning rituals, mine is sipping tea and having bites of bread and marmalade. This is one of my favourite things, eating marmalade, the queen of all preserves. The magnificent spread made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits (usually the Seville orange), boiled with sugar and water.  The bitter-sweet impact to the senses, the distinguished flavor. Marmalade and England are two peas from the same pod. The Marmalade Awards & Festival will take place next Sat 2nd and Sunday 3rd March 2013 at Dalemain Historic House & Gardens near Penrith in Cumbria, UK. With a rich program of events, including  Food Fair, Lectures, Workshops, Crafts, Children’s Activities, marmalade making and book readings. Over 200 competition marmalades to taste with freshly made toast and refreshments. Marmalade has been made and served at Dalemain for hundreds of years and for the past seven years, Dalemain has hosted The World’s Original Marmalade Awards & Festival firmly placing it at the center of the marmalade map. From 50 jars in 2005, the Awards have grown each year and in 2012, nearly, 1,800 jars of marmalade were entered and judged. If you could travel backwards from the pot of bitter jellied orange preserve that most of us think of as marmalade today to its origins you’d see so many different methods and ingredients that you’d be left wondering. Quinces, honey and spices, sometimes with fruit pieces in syrup and other times set so firm it formed a sort of paste. Thick dark mixtures and others glistening with clarity. Some overwhelmingly sweet, others with a strong bitterness and grainy texture. Yet all these ingredients and characteristics sit somewhere in the long history of marmalade. The many hundreds of marmalades that will be judged at the World Marmalade Festival and Awards are all linked to this history in some way, and even those with more exotic flavors and additions have a relationship with the spiced sweetmeat pastes of the Elizabethans. So every time you make or buy a jar, remember the long history that has led to that beautiful and complex flavor as you spoon it onto your morning toast.

http://www.dalemainmarmaladeawards.co.uk/